Caps Close Out Rangers, 3-2

Posted on December 28, 2013
by Mike Vogel

After squandering two-goal leads in each of the two losses that
started their three-game homestand, the Washington Capitals made certain that
the homestand finale wouldn’t conclude in similar fashion. The Caps never took
a two-goal lead, settling instead for a trio of one-goal advantages in Friday
night’s Metropolitan Division matchup against the New York Rangers.

The Caps protected the last of those slim leads to take a
3-2 decision over the Blueshirts.

Eric Fehr supplied what would prove to be the game-winning
tally on a wrist shot from the right circle while the two teams were playing
with four skaters each at 14:51 of the third period. Philipp Grubauer stopped
38 of 40 New York shots on the night to earn his second win over the Rangers in
a span of 20 days.

“It’s huge,” exudes Grubauer of the victory. “Every win is,
because I haven’t played many games, so every win is a great feeling for me.”

Mike Green was responsible for getting the Caps started in
Friday’s game. At 5:09 of the first, Green snared an errant New York pass in
neutral ice and began skating toward the Rangers’ line with purpose. Blueshirts
winger Rick Nash hauled Green down before he could tee up a shot, putting the
Capitals on the power play.

With the Rangers operating out of a diamond formation on the
penalty kill, New York had a man posted up high to try to take away Washington’s center
point option. The Caps got shots on net during the extra man opportunity from
Joel Ward in the slot area and from Alex Ovechkin from his “office” near the
left dot.

Washington managed only four even-strength shots on net in
the first frame, but it carried that 1-0 lead into the second period.

Having taken two penalties in the last 9:28 of the first
period, the Caps played with fire early in the second when Nicklas Backstrom
was whistled for interference at the 58-second mark of the second session.

New York cashed in on its third power play in a span of just
over 10 minutes. Brad Richards shot from center point and Benoit Pouliot was
parked in front. The latter tipped the former’s shot past Caps goalie Philipp
Grubauer to make it a 1-1 game just 97 seconds after the start of the middle
period.

Washington was unable to convert on a pair of power play
opportunities of its own in the first half of the middle frame, and an apparent
Eric Fehr power play goal that would have given the Caps a 2-1 lead was
rightfully denied after a video review.

The Rangers began to tilt the table of territory against the
Caps past the midpoint of the contest. No longer able to cleanly exit their end
and dealing with the long change in the second period, the Caps spent several of
the final 10 minutes of the second period hemmed in their own end and dodging
Broadway bullets.

After a series of excellent Grubauer stops in a short span
of time -- the Rangers put 11 shots on Grubauer in less than four minutes -- the Caps finally nudged the puck out to neutral ice. Washington blueliner
Steve Oleksy put a neat indirect pass off the right wing wall, springing
Backstrom into the attack zone with just enough time and space to carve in and
snap off a wrist shot that beat Talbot to the stick side with 65 seconds
remaining in the period.

In a span of 4:23 leading up to Backstrom’s goal, the
Rangers had fired 13 shots toward the Washington cage while the Caps had
responded with just two shot tries of their own against the New York net.

Erat drew a hooking call on New York’s J.T. Miller with 29
seconds left in the second, an unwise minor for the Rangers’ forward to take at
that spot on the ice and that juncture of the game. The Caps went to the second
intermission with a 2-1 lead and 1:32 worth of carryover power play time.

But New York stunned its hosts in the early seconds of the
third. Rangers defenseman Ryan McDonagh saucered a perfect home run pass from
his own goal line to spring Carl Hagelin on a shorthanded breakaway. Hagelin
deked Grubauer, then tucked the puck through the five-hole to make it a 2-2
game just 17 seconds after the start of the third period.

The two teams played each other fairly evenly through the
first 14:15 of the third. That’s when Washington’s Troy Brouwer and New York’s
Mats Zuccarello were sent off for matching slashing minors. With the two teams
playing four-on-four, Backstrom and Fehr broke out of the Washington end. Fehr,
a right-handed shot who has been playing left wing of late, gave the puck to
Backstrom in the Caps’ end and then slid over to his more natural right side as
the lone winger on the ice for Washington.

Backstrom hit Fehr with a pass just before the New York
line, and the Caps winger unleashed a wrist shot from the top of the right
circle. The shot beat Talbot to the stick side and nestled just inside the far
post to give the Capitals a 3-2 lead they would not relinquish.

“It was definitely a hard fought game by
both teams,” notes Rangers head coach Alain Vigneault. “I thought five on five
I really liked the way we competed tonight. I liked the way we played and
executed, but this game is a game of inches, and late in the third [period],
there’s a turnover in the offensive zone and our gap is just a little bit loose,
and the goalie is a little bit off and the puck finds a way to get into the
back of the net. We’re going to have to be better next time.”

Fehr’s goal came less than half a minute after New York’s
Dan Girardi had hit the goalpost behind Grubauer on a shot from the high slot.

“It’s disappointing obviously,” says
Girardi. “I thought we played a pretty strong game. That last [goal] is just
tough. I hit the post and they come right back down and score. That’s kind of
how it goes in this league some times. You get a chance to score and hit the
post, and they come right back down and put it in on you. It’s unfortunate we
lost that way but, there’s a lot of good things we did tonight.”

Twenty – Friday’s victory was Washington’s 20th
of the season (20-14-4) and it came in the team’s 38th game of the
campaign. The Capitals are one game ahead of last season’s pace in which they
notched win No. 20 in their 39th game of the season (20-17-2).

Sixty-Minute Men – Friday’s win was a rare regulation
victory for the Caps, just their 10th of the season. The Capitals
have a dozen regulation/overtime victories in 2013-14, the second fewest among
the eight teams in the Metropolitan Division.

The regulation win was just the second for the Capitals in
their last 11 games on home ice (5-5-1). Washington has collected six of its 10
regulation wins this season on home ice.

En Fuego – Backstrom notched his 13th
multiple-point game of the season in Friday’s contest. He has 17 points (four
goals, 13 assists) in his last eight games and is tied for second in the league
in assists (34) and tied for third in the league in scoring (44 points).

“He’s really protecting the puck well,” says Fehr of
Backstrom. “It seems like you need to send two or three guys at him to get the
puck away from him. He is handling the puck with confidence, and he is making
great plays. It’s what we expect from him every night, but it’s pretty
unbelievable to watch.”

The 300 Club – Friday’s game marked the 300th
game for Fehr in a Capitals uniform. He has played 335 games in the NHL.

Fehr became the ninth different Capitals skater to register
a game-winning goal for Washington in 2013-14. Only Ovechkin (four) has more
than one.

Number Three – Friday night’s goaltending matchup pitted a
pair of goaltenders who started the season as the third netminders on their
teams’ respective depth charts.

Grubauer opened the season at AHL Hershey and was recalled
from that team on Nov. 30. With Friday’s win, he is now 5-1-1 with a 2.18 GAA
and a .937 save pct. in eight apperances (six starts) for the Capitals this
season.

Talbot started the 2013-14 campaign with Hartford of the
AHL, and was recalled to the Rangers for good on Oct. 20. Even with his loss to
the Caps on Friday, the 26-year-old Talbot is 8-3 with two shutouts, a 1.72 GAA
and a .936 save pct. in 13 games (11 starts) for New York this season.

Blueshirt Beater – Grubauer earned his first career NHL win
over the Rangers in New York on Dec. 8. He has now stopped 68 of 71 shots he
has faced in two career games against New York, including 57 of 58 shots at
even strength.

Power Move – Caps defenseman Dmitry Orlov notched his first
assist of the season on Green’s first-period goal. The helper was the third
power-play assist of Orlov’s NHL career and his first since Dec. 31, 2011
against the Blue Jackets in Columbus.

Orlov just missed netting the first power-play goal of his
NHL career in the second period of Friday’s game. Only a nifty right pad save
from Talbot kept Orlov from converting a back door one-timer in the waning
seconds of another Washington power play.

Man Down – New York lost defenseman Anton Stralman to an
undisclosed injury early in the first period. Already playing without top four
defenseman Marc Staal, Stralman’s injury taxed the New York backline in its
first game back after the three-day holiday break.

With Stralman unavailable after the 12:49 mark of the first,
the Rangers were suddenly without one of the three defensemen who have played
in each of the season’s first 39 games for New York.

Stralman and Staal both entered the game with identical
average nightly ice times of 19:58. With those two both out of action, McDonagh
(24:22 per night entering the game), Girardi (22:16) and Michael Del Zotto
(18:17) were forced to shoulder a heavier workload against Washington.

“You go from six to five defenseman,”
begins Vigneault, “and then the top three have to log a tremendous amount of
minutes, so that might make it a little bit challenging towards the end of the
game as far as defending and attacking, but that’s not an excuse.

“Those are things that happen. I thought
for the most part we found a way to compete real hard and just before they
scored that goal, we hit the post and instead of going post in, it goes post
out.”

McDonagh finished the night at 29:53, Girardi at 27:35 and
Del Zotto at 24:37. John Moore (17:40) played slightly more than his previous
nightly average of 15:37 and Justin Falk helped out with 11:59 of clock time,
on par with his single-game average of 12:10.

“It’s really difficult for a team to go down to four [defensemen],
five [defensemen],” observes Fehr, “and for them, right after a break, you’re
really feeling it. I think they did a really good job of breaking pucks out,
though. I thought we did a really good job of putting pressure on them, but at
the end we were lucky to get the win.”

Down On The Farm – A night after suffering a 4-1 road loss
to the Senators in Binghamton, the AHL Hershey Bears were back home at Giant
Center on Friday night, hosting the Syracuse Crunch.

Peter LeBlanc got the Bears started at 11:40 of the first,
giving the home team a 1-0 lead with help from Casey Wellman and Dane Byers. Just
17 seconds later, the Crunch pulled even with a tally of its own. Syracuse
added a pair in the second to take a 3-1 lead into the final stanza.

Tyson Strachan scored his second goal of the season for
Hershey at 13:09 of the third, Wellman and Jeff Taffe assisting. But Hershey
was never able to manufacture the equalizer.

David Leggio stopped 21 of the 24 shots he saw on the night
in the Hershey nets.

Hershey plays its third game in as many nights on Saturday
when it entertains the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins at Giant Center. The
12-12-2-3 Bears are now in 12th place in the AHL’s Eastern
Conference standings, four points south of the final playoff berth in the
conference.

Down a level, the ECHL Reading Royals were back at home at
Santander Arena on Friday, a night after they put a 6-2 hurting on the Jackals
in Elmira. The Royals hosted the Kalamazoo Wings on Friday, but this time
Reading wound up on the short end of a 4-1 score.

Riley Gill stopped 22 of the 26 shots he faced and Dustin
Gazley scored the Royals’ lone goal of the night.

The 13-10-1-0 Royals are now six points behind front-running
Wheeling in the Atlantic Division standings, but Reading also has three games
in hand on the Nailers.

Reading hosts the Wings again on Saturday at Santander, its
third game in as many nights.

By The Numbers – New York’s McDonagh (10:46) and the Caps’
John Carlson (10:07) were both on the ice for more than half of the first frame
… Carlson was the only Caps skater to log more than 20 minutes in the game; he
finished at 26:38. He also led the Caps with five blocked shots on the night …
Ovechkin paced the Caps with seven shots on net, 10 shot attempts and five hits
… Grabovski won six of seven draws (86%) on the night … Moore led the Rangers
with seven shots on goal … Chris Kreider paced the Blueshirts with five hits …
Domenic Moore won 11 of 16 (69%) face-offs for the Rangers in just 11:39 of
work.